Here are some process photos of the Joust Bird
I almost always start with a foil and wire frame (not pictured, sorry) before adding the Super Sculpey. Here you can see that the structure was still taking shape. I hadn't quite worked out the beak shape and hadn't added the crest. The shape of the chest is still pretty flat.
The sculpting is pretty close to done here. I regretfully used different colors of Sculpey just because I had them sitting around. It made it hard to see what everything would actually look like once painted. My favorite piece of reference for this guy was the tongue. I came across photos of goose tongues which have teeth-like ridges on them. In the end the tongue got a bit obscured because I painted it black, but there's a lot of detail tucked in there.
I love adding little story bits in the designs. There is a little scar in the feathers on the chest where the feathers never grew back. I imagined that surviving many joust battles in the sky would leave a lot of bumps, bruises, and cuts. The figure was baked around this point before adding the helmet.
Here I just started to add the first layer of weathering for the paint job. You can see a wash of sepia ink around the eye and neck. The spike on the helmet was intended to be a cut off beak from a bested opponent, saved as a trophy.
The paint job was 90% done here. I added the nose ring which eventually got a bit of bronze paint and some rust added using pumice texture gel. It is basically acrylic gel medium with sand mixed in. There is a little on the helmet as well.
The paint was acrylic applied with brushes. I used watercolors and ink here and there and Minwax Polycrylic to goop up the eyes, tongue, and mouth.
